Four NHL Players Who Risk a Regression in 2024

NHL players on the Florida Panthers, Vancouver Canucks, Carolina Hurricanes and Los Angeles Kings have played very well to start the season. But will they keep it up?

When it comes to scoring and analytics, the biggest elephant in the room is always the dreaded r-word: regression.

The basic logic is that any player who’s performing well above expectations will eventually come back down to earth. They get a little less lucky or maybe opposing defenses start locking on them a little more.

It’s true that hot streaks and absurd production levels can last for an entire season, but regression is like gravity – sooner or later, it will happen.

Based on shooting percentages and some advanced stats, here are four players who could face a regression in the second half of 2023-24.

In a contract season, Reinhart’s on pace for his third straight 30-goal season and a career-best 103 points. Though he’s been an extremely efficient finisher throughout his career, he’s never scored goals at this pace. His 26.1 shooting percentage ranks third among forwards with at least 20 games played and 10 goals scored.

It’s unlikely Reinhart can maintain this pace for the rest of the season, and he can be a very streaky scorer. Last season, he scored just two points in nine games in October, and in the season before that, he scored six points in 13 games in November. Two things that may help Reinhart avoid a regression: playing time and a good power play, which ranks 20th even though he leads the league with 10 power-play goals.

There are already some signs Boeser is slowing down. After scoring 11 goals in 15 games in November with a 26.8 shooting percentage, he scored seven in 12 games in December with a 20.6 shooting percentage. Known for his deadly wrist shot but hampered by injuries over the past few seasons, Boeser is healthy and well on his way to smashing his career high of 29 goals, which he set in his rookie season.

However, his 24.0 shooting percentage raises eyebrows and is currently outpacing his expected goals total at 5-on-5 by six goals, per naturalstattrick.com. His possession numbers are trending down for the third straight season with an individual points percentage (IPP) – a measure of how involved Boeser is on scoring plays when he’s on the ice – that’s 15 percent higher than last season.

There’s no denying Noesen is playing the best hockey of his career. The 30-year-old veteran is on pace for a career-high 50 points and no longer relying on the power play to score points like he did last season. His current 21.7 shooting percentage is more than double his career average of 10.6 percent. His possession numbers have been very strong with the Hurricanes, but that’s not difficult to do with one of the league’s biggest analytical darlings; the Canes rank first in Corsi-for percentage and third in expected goals percentage.

Noesen has run hot and cold: eight points in 10 games in October, four in 12 in November and 10 in 14 in December. Given how much the Canes shuffle their lines and how little ice time Noesen receives – he’s averaging 12:07 per game, similar to what he received last season – it’s difficult to see how Noesen can remain so efficient with so few opportunities. If he really was that good at scoring, the Hurricanes are doing a disservice playing him so little.

We don’t want to rain down on the Kings’ parade, but you wonder if the workload will soon start catching up to Talbot, who’s the third-oldest goalie in the league. The only two older than him, Marc-Andre Fleury and Jonathan Quick, are no longer starters, and Talbot’s already played twice as much as them. Talbot has played more than 50 games just three times in his career, all of them under Todd McLellan’s Oilers in Connor McDavid’s first three seasons in the league.

Maybe familiarity with McLellan gives Talbot a little more confidence, but Talbot hasn’t played this well for an extended period of time in nearly a decade. What can keep Talbot afloat is the Kings’ excellent defense; they allowed the second-fewest shots per game (26.7) and boast the league’s best penalty kill.